Illegal Border Crossers and Unruly Citizens: Burma-Pakistan-Indian borderlands from the nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries

Abstract

AbstractThis article studies borders and border crossers in the area that became Burma, India, and Pakistan from the colonial period through to the immediate post-independence years in the mid-twentieth century. At independence, the new states’ borders not only confused vast sections of their populations by their imprecision but deprived them of their traditional practices of traversing forests, lands, and rivers to use those resources or visit kin. Border crossers’ complaints about the loss of customary access were largely ignored by the states, which tended to view crossers as illegal interlopers or plotters sent over by neighbouring polities. The states redoubled efforts to control such movement by strictly defining citizenship and foreignness, and by militarizing the border police. In addition, the introduction of boundaries between India, Bangladesh, and Myanmar caused conflict between diverse groups within the borderlands and between those groups and the state, often on the basis of religion and ethnicity, which persist to this day and has resulted in the displacement of thousands of people across the borders. An examination of states’ actions and popular reactions shows the evolution of states’ citizenship criteria, their implementation, and challenges to them by mundane or violent ‘transgressions’ of borderlanders. In doing so, it clarifies the mechanics—and the breakdowns—of state-making.